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Before China’s recent crypto crackdown resulted in the closure of the country’s Bitcoin mining facilities, reports have already predicted that it could be losing the top spot to another challenger. China’s BTC hashrate had already been declining significantly that experts believe North America could soon challenge China’s dominance.
For instance, a study published on 8btc.com revealed that China’s Bitcoin hashrate has already declined by 10 percent even before the government’s recent crackdown on crypto mining and trading. “As of April 2020, the hashrate dominance of Chinese miners on the Bitcoin network was around 65%,” the report noted. “One year later, this dominance has dropped to about 55%.”
North American mining firms, which have long been building up their capacities, are seen to greatly benefit from the decline of China’s Bitcoin mining industry due to the government’s crackdown. Below are the top three companies that are poised to take advantage of the East-West shift in crypto mining as compiled by Cointelegraph.
Riot Blockchain
Castle Rock, Colorado-based Riot Blockchain has been busy beefing up its mining capacity since last year in a series of hardware purchases from Bitcoin miner manufacturers like Bitmain. The company spent millions of dollars to acquire thousands of Antminers in August and December 2020, increasing its capacity by 460 percent last year.
This year, the company continued to increase its capacity by purchasing over 42,000 Antminers and the Whinstone data center in Texas. With the purchase, it is on track to own the single largest BTC mining facility in the U.S. and it even plans to increase the site’s capacity from 750 megawatts to over 1,000 MW.
With its increased capacity, the firm mined 187 BTC in March, an 80 percent increase from its March 2020 production. Riot Blockchain’s June production of 243 BTC represents a massive 406 percent from June 2020’s production.
“The exodus of Bitcoin mining from China has resulted in a downward difficulty adjustment and lower global network hash rate,” Riot said. “As such, Riot is currently mining more Bitcoin per day than at any time in the Company’s history.”
Marathon
Nevada-based Marathon, considered to be Riot Blockchain’s main rival in North America’s hash wars, has also been expanding its hardware since last year. For instance, it bought 10,000 Antminer S-19 Pros from Bitmain in October 2020, increasing its operational hash rate capacity to 2.56 EH/s.
The company announced in May that it plans to build a 300 MW carbon-neutral data center to house 73,000 Bitcoin miners. This will bring its carbon neutrality to about 70% and push its hash rate to 10.37 EH/s, making Marathon number five on the current Bitcoin hash rate distribution log.
Hut 8
Back in 2018, Toronto, Canada-based Hut 8 was largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner by capacity but the company suffered losses of around $136 million that year due to the market correction following 2017’s crypto rally. However, the company is ready to reclaim its share and has beefed up its mining capacity like the rest.
It announced its purchase of 11,090 MicroBT M30S, M30S+, and M31S miners last month which will be deployed by the fourth quarter this year. Once installed, the new equipment will boost its mining capacity to 2.5 EH/s.
“Given current bitcoin network dynamics, these hashrate installations are expected to increase Hut 8's current average production from 6.5 – 7.5 Bitcoin per day to 14 – 16 Bitcoin per day based on current economic conditions,” Hut 8 said.
The company previously announced that it plans to increase its hash rate to six EH/s by mid-2022. Hut 8 also estimated that by the start of 2022, its total Bitcoin holdings will reach 5,000 BTC.
